… Jerry Bergman has
donated the article A
Brief History of the Eugenics Movement. Dr Bergman's conclusion on
Eugenics (= racial improvement by scientific control of breeding) are
reminiscent
of the conclusions of "Anonymous" on the related topic – Social
Darwinism.
(Investigator 33)

Social Darwinism was the
theory that "societies
and classes evolve under the principle of survival of the fittest."
With
eugenics such evolution toward better/fitter societies could in
principle
be speeded up.

Dr Bergman shows that
eugenic ideas were
supported by many scientists, were contrary to the Bible, discouraged
help
to the poor, culminated in the Holocaust, and became untenable with
newer
scientific research. "Anonymous" showed the same of Social Darwinism.

A Brief
History of theEugenics
Movement

(Investigator 72, 2000 May)

Dr Jerry Bergman

ABSTRACT

Eugenics, the science
of improving the
human race by scientific control of breeding, was viewed by a large
segment
of scientists for almost one hundred years as an important, if not a
major
means of producing paradise on earth. These scientists concluded that
many
human traits were genetic, and that persons who came from genetically
'good
families' tended to turn out far better than those who came from poor
families.
The next step was to encourage the good families to have more children,
and the poor families to have few or no children.

From these simple
observations developed
one of the most far-reaching movements, which culminated in the loss of
millions of lives. It discouraged aiding the sick, building asylums for
the insane, or even aiding the poor and all those who were believed to
be in some way 'genetically inferior', which included persons afflicted
with an extremely wide variety of unrelated physical and even
psychological
maladies. Their end goal was to save society from the 'evolutionary
inferior'.
The means was sexual sterilization, permanent custody of 'defective'
adults
by the state, marriage restrictions, and even the elimination of the
unfit
through means which ranged from refusal to help them to outright
killing.
This movement probably had a greater adverse influence upon society
than
virtually any other that developed from a scientific theory in modern
times.
It culminated with the infamous Holocaust and afterward rapidly
declined.

THE
HISTORY OF THE MOVEMENT

The eugenics movement grew
from the core
ideas of evolution, primarily those expounded by Charles Darwin.1
As Haller concluded:

'Eugenics was the
legitimate offspring
of Darwinian evolution, a natural and doubtless inevitable outgrowth of
currents of thought that developed from the publication in 1859 of
Charles
Darwin's The Origin of Species.' 2

Eugenics spanned the
political spectrum from
conservatives to radical socialists; what they had in common was a
belief
in evolution and a faith that science, particularly genetics, held the
key for improving the life of humans.3

The first eugenics
movement in America was
founded in 1903 and included many of the most well known new-world
biologists
in the country: David Star Jordan was its chairman (a prominent
biologist
and chancellor of Stanford University), Luther Burbank (the famous
plant
breeder), Vernon L. Kellog (a world renowned biologist at Stanford),
William
B. Castle (a Harvard geneticist), Roswell H. Johnson (a geologist and a
professor of genetics), and Charles R. Henderson of the University of
Chicago.

One of the most prominent
eugenicists in
the United States was Charles Benedict Davenport, a Harvard Ph.D, where
he served as instructor of biology until he became an assistant
professor
at the University of Chicago in 1898.4 In 1904, he became
director
for a new station for experimental evolution at Cold Spring Harbor on
Long
Island. Even Edward Thorndike of Columbia University, one of the most
influential
educational psychologists in history, was also involved. His work is
still
today regarded as epic and his original textbook on tests and
measurements
set the standard in the field.

Other persons active in
the early eugenics
society were eminent sexologists Havelock Ellis, Dr F. W. Mott, a
leading
expert in insanity, and Dr A. F. Tredgold, an author of a major
textbook
on mental deficiency, and one of the foremost British experts on this
subject.
Nobel laureate George Bernard Shaw, author H. G. Wells, and planned
parenthood
founder Margaret Sanger were also very involved in the movement.5

As the eugenics movement
grew, it added other
prominent individuals. Among them were Alexander Graham Bell, the
inventor
of the telephone who was 'one of the most respected, if not one of
the
most zealous participants in the American Eugenics Movement.' 6He
published numerous papers in scholarly journals specifically on
genetics
and the deafness problem, and also in other areas.

Of the many geneticists
who are today recognized
as scientific pioneers that were once eugenicists include J. B. S.
Haldane,
Thomas Hunt Morgan, William Bateson, Herman J. Muller, and evolutionary
biologist Julian Huxley.7 Professors were prominent among
both
the officers and members of various eugenics societies which sprang up
in the United States and Europe. In virtually every college and
university
were professors 'inspired by the new creed,' and most of the
major
colleges had credit courses on eugenics.8 These classes were
typically well attended and their content was generally accepted as
part
of proven science. Many eugenicists also lectured widely and developed
new courses, both at their institutes and elsewhere, to help educate
the
public in the principles of eugenics.' According to Haller:

'the movement was the
creation of biological
scientists, social scientists, and others with a faith that science
provided
a guide for human progress. Indeed, during the first three decades of
the
present century, eugenics was a sort of secular religion for many who
dreamed
of a society in which each child might be born endowed with vigorous
health
and an able mind.' 10

The eugenics movement also
attacked the idea
of democracy itself. Many concluded that letting inferior persons
participate
in government was naive, if not dangerous. Providing educational
opportunities
and governmental benefits for everyone likewise seemed a misplacement
of
resources: one saves only the best cows for breeding, slaughtering the
inferior ones, and these laws of nature must be applied to human
animals.
If a primary determinant of mankind's behavioural nature is genetic as
the movement concluded, then environmental reforms are largely useless.
Further, those who are at the bottom of the social ladder in society,
such
as Blacks, are in this position not because of social injustice or
discrimination,
but as a result of their own inferiority.11

THE
FOUNDER –FRANCIS GALTON, DARWIN'S
COUSIN

The first chapter in the
most definitive
history of the eugenics movement12 is entitled 'Francis
Galton,
Founder of the Faith'. Influenced by his older cousin, Charles Darwin,
Galton began his lifelong quest to quantify humans, and search for ways
of genetically improving the human race in about 1860. So extremely
important
was Darwin's idea to Galton, as Hailer states, that within six years of
the publication of The Origin of Species

'...Galton had
arrived at the doctrine
that he was to preach for the remainder of his life.., this became for
him a new ethic and a new religion.'13

Galton openly stated that
his goal was 'to
produce a highly gifted race of men by judicious marriages during
several
consecutive generations'. 14In an 1865
article,
he proposed that the state sponsor competitive examinations, and the
male
winners marry the female winners. He later suggested that the state
rank
people according to evolutionary superiority, and then use money
'rewards'
to encourage those who were ranked high to have more children. Those
ranked
towards the bottom would be segregated in monasteries and convents, and
watched to prevent them from propagating more of their kind.15

Galton concluded that not
only intelligence,
but many other human traits were primarily, if not almost totally, the
product of heredity. He believed that virtually every human function
could
be evaluated statistically, and that human beings could be compared in
a quantitative manner on many hundreds of traits. He was also fully
convinced
that the survival of the fittest law fully applied to humans, and that
it should be under the control of those who were most intelligent and
responsible.
Galton himself coined the word eugenics from the Greek words
meaning
well
born. He also introduced the terms nature and nurture
to
science and started the nature/nurture argument which is still raging
today.
His goal was to produce a super race to control tomorrow's world, a
dream
which he not only wrote about, but actively involved himself in
promoting
his whole life.

In 1901 he founded the Eugenics
Education
Society based in the Statistics Department at the University
College
of London.16 This organization flourished, later even
producing
a journal called Biometrika, founded and edited by Galton and
later
Pearson. It is still a leading journal today, but it has since rejected
the basic idea behind its founding.

Galton, himself a child
prodigy, soon set
about looking for superior men by measuring the size of human heads,
bodies
and minds. For this purpose, he devised sophisticated measuring
equipment
which would quantify not only the brain and intelligence, but virtually
every other human trait that could be measured without doing surgery.
He
even constructed a whistle to measure the upper range of hearing, now
called
a Galton whistle, a tool which is still standard equipment in a
physiological laboratory. His work was usually anything but superficial
– much of it was extremely thorough. He relied heavily upon the
empirical
method and complex statistical techniques, many of which he developed
for
his work in this area.

In fact, Galton and his
coworker, Karl Pearson,
are regarded as founders of the modern field of statistics, and both
made
major contributions. Their thorough, detailed research was extremely
convincing,
especially to academics. German academics were among the first to
wholeheartedly
embrace his philosophy, as well as the theory of Darwinian evolution.

The idea that humans could
achieve biological
progress and eventually breed a superior race was not seen as heretical
to the Victorian mind, nor did it have the horrendous implications or
the
taint of Nazism that it does today. Allaround Galton were the
fruits
of the recent advances in technology and the industrial revolution that
had dramatically proved human mastery over inanimate nature. 17
They knew that, by careful selection, farmers could obtain better
breeds
of both plants and animals, and it was logical that the human races
could
similarly be improved. 18

Galton's conclusion was
that, for the sake
of mankind's future, pollution of the precious superior gene pool of
certain
classes must be stopped by preventing interbreeding with
inferior
stock. The next step was that we humans must intelligently direct our
own
evolution rather than leave such a vital event to chance. And Galton
was
not alone is this conclusion. All of the major fathers of modem
evolution,
including Charles Darwin, Alfred Russel Wallace (often credited as the
co-founder of the modern theory of evolution), Edward Blyth, as well as
E. Ray Lankester, and Erasmus Darwin, inferred that 'evolution
sanctioned
a breeding program for man'.19

The route to produce a
race of gifted humans
was controlled marriages of superior stock.20 In an effort
to
be tactful in his discussion of race breeding, he used terms such as
'judicious
marriages' and 'discouraging breeding by inferior stock.' He did not
see
himself as openly cruel, at least in his writings, but believed that
his
proposals were for the long term good of humanity. Galton utterly
rejected
and wrote much against the Christian doctrines of helping the weak,
displaying
a tolerable attitude toward human fragilities and also showing charity
towards the poor. Although this response may seem cold – the mind of
the
co-founder of the field, Karl Pearson, has often be described as
mathematical
and without feeling and sympathy – it must be viewed in the science
climate
of the time.21 Galton received numerous honours for his
work,
including the Darwin and Wallace Medals, and also the Huxley and the
Copley
Medals. He was even knighted by the British government and thus became
Sir Francis Galton.

Understanding the eugenics
movement requires
a knowledge of how evolution was viewed in America and Europe in the
late
1800s and early 1900s. Many scientists had concurrently applied
Darwinian
analysis to various racial' groups, concluding that some 'races' were
more
evolutionarily advanced than others. If this claim was valid, the
presence
of certain racial groups in the United States and Europe constituted a
threat to 'the long-run biological quality of the nation.' Consequently,
it was concluded that 'selective breeding was a necessary step in
solving
many major social problems'.22

We are today keenly aware
of the tragic results
of this belief; most people are now horrified by such statements when
quoted
by modern day white supremacists and racist groups. Many of the
extremist
groups today often quote from, and also have reprinted extensively, the
scientific and eugenic literature of this time.

THE
MAKING OF GALTON

From this point on,
Galton's ideas about
eugenics rapidly catalyzed. The knowledge he obtained from his African
travels confirmed his beliefs about inferior races, and how to improve
society. This conclusion strongly supported the writings of both his
grandfather
and his first cousin, Charles Darwin. Galton, highly rewarded for his
scientific
contributions, likely felt that his eugenics work was another way that
he could achieve even more honours. He concluded that his work was more
important than that which he had completed for the various geographical
societies, and more important than even his research which helped the
fingerprint
system become part of the British method of criminal identification.

The history of eugenics is
intimately tied
to the history of evolution. Hailer, the author of one of the most
definitive
works on the history of the eugenics movement, stated

'Eugenics arose out
of the Darwinian
theory of evolution and attempted to apply that theory to mankind…
eugenics...involved the application – or misapplication – to man of
the discoveries in genetics that were then transforming scientific
understanding
of living organisms and the ways that evolution operated.' 23In a letter that he wrote to
Darwin, Galton
said
'the appearance of
your The Origin
of Species formed a real crisis in my life; your book drove away
the
constraint of my old superstition as if it had been a nightmare and was
the first to give me freedom of thought.' 24Another aspect of Galton's
motivation was:
'Galton, himself an
agnostic, found
in eugenics an emotional equivalent for religion. "An enthusiasm to
improve
the race is so noble in its aim" he declared, "that it might well give
rise to the sense of a religious obligation."' 25He even advocated that law
and custom should
be utilized to support eugenics for the improvement of the race. This
of
course is exactly what the National Socialist Party did not too many
years
later in Germany.

Galton called the method
of race analysis
he developed 'statistics by intercomparison.' It later became a common
system of scaling psychological tests. This scale permitted Galton

'to make a number of
general statements
about the comparative abilities of different races, statements that
were
well in tune with (and in many ways were merely re-expressions of the
prejudices
of that day'. 26Interestingly, Galton rated
the ability of the
ancient Athenians
'very nearly two
grades higher than
our own – that is, about as much as our race is above that of the
African
Negro'. 27How Galton was able to do
this is not fully
clear, but he likely relied almost totally upon the writings of
literate
Athenians who we know something about today, likely the more eminent
and
talented persons of that culture.

Around the turn of the
century, eugenics
was fully accepted by the educated classes. As Kelves states:

'Galton's religion
[became] as much
a part of the secular pieties of the nineteen-twenties as the Einstein
craze.' 28

Books on eugenics became
best-sellers – Albert
E. Wiggam wrote at least four popular books on eugenics, several were
best-sellers29-32
and the prestigious Darwinian family name stayed with the eugenics
movement
for years – the president of the British Eugenics Society from 1911 to
1928 was Major Leonard Darwin, Charles' son.

The impact of the eugenics
movement on American
law was especially profound. In the 1920s, congress introduced and
passed
many laws to restrict the influx of 'inferior races,' including all of
those from Southern and Eastern Europe, and also China. These beliefs
were
also reflected in everything from school textbooks to social policy.
American
Blacks especially faced the brunt of these laws. Inter-racial marriage
was forbidden by law in many areas and discouraged by social pressure
in
virtually all. The eugenicists concluded that the American belief that
education could benefit everyone was unscientific, and that the
conviction
that social reform and social justice could substantially reduce human
misery was more than wrong-headed, it was openly dangerous.34

According to Hailer, it
was actually between
1870 and 1900 that

'educated Americans
took giant strides
toward a fairly wide acceptance of varying forms and degrees of
racism.'
35The year 1870 is an important
date because
'before the Civil War
the lack of a
well-developed racist philosophy in the Western World and a general
belief
that all men descended from Adam and Eve retarded the growth of race
concepts.
Only among those defending Negro slavery from increasingly bitter
attack
did specific biological theories of race become at all important. In
the
post-Civil War period, however, the general background of evolutionary
thought and the writings of European races provided a climate of
opinion
that nurtured race thinking.' 36The conclusion was
'the broad, flat
nose, the slanted profile
of the Negro face, and the smaller, average skull capacity – so
it was argued — placed the Negro closer to the anthropoids.'And since they were
inferior, miscegenation'was
the road to racial degeneration.' 37

ENTER
KARL PEARSON

The second most important
architect of eugenics
theory was Galton's disciple, Karl Pearson. His degree was in
mathematics
with honours from Kings College, Cambridge, which he completed in 1879.
He then studied law and was called to the bar in 1881. A socialist, he
often lectured on Marxism to revolutionary clubs. He was later
appointed
to the chair of applied mathematics and mechanics at University
College,
London, and soon thereafter established his reputation as a
mathematician.
His publication The Grammar of Science also accorded him a
place
in the philosophy of science field.

Pearson, greatly
influenced by Galton, soon
began to apply his mathematical knowledge to biological problems. He
developed
the field now known as statistics primarily to research evolution
specifically
as it related to eugenics. Pearson vigorously applied the experimental
method to his research. Kevles concludes that Pearson was cold, remote,
driven, and treated any emotional pleasure as a weakness. Challenging
him
on a scientific point invited 'demolishing fire in return'. Pearson
'like
so many Victorian undergraduates, was beset by an agony of religious
doubt'.38

Pearson concluded that
Darwinism supported
socialism because he assumed that socialism produced a wealthier,
stronger,
more productive, and in short, a superior nation. And the outcome of
the
Darwinian struggle results in the ascendancy of the 'fittest' nation,
not
individuals. Achievement of national fitness can better be produced by
national socialism, consequently socialism will produce more fit
nations
that are better able to survive. Pearson carried his conclusions of
heritability
far beyond that which was warranted by the data. He stated to the
anthropological
institute in 1903 that

'we inherit our
parents' tempers, our
parents' conscientiousness, shyness and ability, even as we inherit
their
stature, forearm and span... and no training or education can create
[intelligence],
you must breed it'.39Much of the criticism against
the theory of
eugenics was also against the theory of evolution itself. The two were
highly intertwined, and many scientific critics attacked both ideas as
a unit. Pearson, as Kevles states, often displayed a
'relentless
closed-mindedness,' and 'frequently
tooka club to his scientific enemies and slashingly abused
even…his
methodological friends who queried his biometry or his eugenics.' 40The Danish biologist, Wilhelm
Johannsen, discerned
from his empirical research that, barring use of the gene splicing
technology
which was unknown in his day, a pure line of beans could not be bred
beyond
a maximum limit for a given character regardless of how it was
manipulated.
Pearson responded in a very irrational way against this evidence, even
dismissing two members of his editorial board when they published
articles
reporting Johannsen's research. Pearson's only argument against
Johannsen's
conclusions was because reasonable correlational coefficients for
intelligence
and physical traits existed, therefore the influence of heredity must
be
similar for both; end of argument. It was primarily his theories of
eugenics
in which his fire erupted:
'If Pearson responded
to criticism with
polemics, it was because the dissidents struck at his secular
church....
When it came to biometry, eugenics, and statistics, he was the besieged
defender of an emotionally charged faith [and his research in eugenics
and statistics] conformed to the icy distance of his character,
reinforcing
his propensity for dealing with man in the impersonal group.' 41Pearson was no minor figure
in the history of
science. His contributions in statistics are crucial to virtually all
modern
scientific research.42 He not only developed the Pearson
product moment correlational coefficient, to which his name is
attached,
but also regression analysis, multiple correlation, and
chi
square, and made numerous important contributions in the area of
statistical
analysis including the goodness of fit theory.

When Galton died in
January of 1911, the
University College received much of his money and established a Galton
eugenics professorship, and a new department called applied
statistics.
The
fund enabled Pearson to be freed from his 'burdensome' teaching to
devote
full time to eugenics research. The new department blossomed, and drew
research workers from around the world. Pearson now could select only
the
best scientists and students who would immerse themselves in eugenic
work.
His students helped to manage the dozens of research projects in which
Pearson was involved.

Pearson's students and
those who worked under
him had to be as dedicated as he was or they soon were forced to leave.
Some, trying to emulate Pearson's pace, suffered nervous breakdowns.43
The laboratory's goal was the production of research, and produce they
did.

Between 1903 and 1918,
Pearson and his staff
published over 300 works, plus various government reports and popular
expositions
of genetics. Some of his co-workers questioned the idea that the only
way
to improve a nation is to ensure that its future generations come
chiefly
from the more superior members of the existing generation, but if they
valued their position, most said nothing." As Kevles added,

'if staff members or
students had private
reservations about the validity of the work, it required rare courage
to
make their doubts known.... Pearson chose and assigned the research
problems,
guided their execution, and edited the results.' 45In 1925 Pearson
began publishing The
Annals of Eugenics. He continued to contribute both his enthusiasm
and his mathematical genius to the cause until he died in 1936. He
helped
spread eugenics, first to Germany and later to the United States, then
to the four corners of the earth. In Germany, The International
Society
for Racial Hygiene was formed in Munich in 1910 with Galton as the
honorary President." As Hailer states:
'Thus eugenics in
Germany began its
sad history that, under the Nazis, would justify wholesale sexual
sterilization
and then euthanasia for the allegedly unfit and would provide part of
the
justification for the slaughter of four to six million Jews.' 47Galton' s successor was
Leonard Darwin, the
son of Charles, who was very active in the eugenics movement. For years
Leonard advocated compulsory sterilization to stop the 'unchecked
multiplication
of inferior types'.48

CHARLES DAVENPORT, THE
AMERICAN LEADER

The next most important
figure in the eugenics
movement was an American, Charles Davenport. He studied engineering at
preparatory school, and later became an instructor of zoology at
Harvard.
While at Harvard, he read some of Karl Pearson's work and was soon
'converted'.
In 1899 he became an assistant professor at the University of Chicago.
During a trip to England, he visited Galton, Pearson and Weldon, and
returned
home an enthusiastic true believer.

In 1904 he convinced the
Carnegie Institute
to establish a station for 'the experimental study of evolution' at
Cold
Spring Harbor, some thirty miles from New York City. Davenport then
recruited
a staff to work on various research projects ranging from natural
selection
to hybridization. He argued that hereditability was a major influence
in
everything from criminality to epilepsy, even alcoholism and pauperism
(being poor).

Among the many problems
with his research
is that he assumed that traits which we now know are polygenic in
origin
were single Mendelian characters. This error caused him to greatly
oversimplify
interpolating from the genotype to the phenotype. He ignored the forces
of the environment to such a degree that he labelled those who 'loved
the
sea' as suffering from thalassaphilia, and concluded that it
was
a sex-linked recessive trait because it was virtually always exhibited
in males! Davenport even concluded that prostitution was caused not by
social, cultural or economic circumstances, but a dominant genetic
trait
which caused a woman to be a nymphomaniac. He spoke against birth
control
because it reduced the natural inhibitions against sex.

He had no shortage of data
for his ideas
— when the Cold Spring Harbor was founded in 1911 to when it closed in
1924, more than 250 field workers were employed to gather data — and
about
three-quarters of a million cases were completed. This data served as
the
source of bulletins, memoirs, articles and books on eugenics and
related
matters. Raised a Congregationalist, Davenport rejected his father's
piety,

'replacing it with a
Babbitt-like religiosity,
a worship of great concepts: Science, Humanity, the improvement of
Mankind,
Eugenics. The birth control crusader, Margaret Sanger recalled that
Davenport,
in expressing his worry about the impact of contraception on the better
stocks, "used to lift his eyes reverently, and with his hands upraised
as though in supplication, quiver emotionally as he breathed,
"Protoplasm.
We want more protoplasm"'.49

AND THE
MOVEMENT GREW AND
PROSPERED

There are few individuals
more important
in the field of educational psychology and educational measurement and
evaluation than Edward Lee Thorndike. He wrote many of the college
texts
which were the standards for years (and many still are), not only in
educational
psychology but also in measurement and child psychology. Yet, he was
largely
unaware of, or ignored, the massive evidence which had accumulated
against
many of the basic eugenic views.

When Thorndike retired in
1940 from Columbia
Teachers' College, he wrote a 963-page book entitled Human Nature
and
the Social Order. In it, he reiterated virtually all of the most
blatant
misconceptions and distortions of the eugenicists. As Chase states,

'at the age of
sixty-six, he was still
peddling the long discredited myths about epilepsy that Galton had
revived
when Thorndike was a boy of nine... Despite Thorndike's use of
such
twentieth-century scientific words as "genes" and his advocacy of the
then
current Nazi eugenics court's practice of sterilizing people who got
low
marks on intelligence tests and for "inferior" morals, this [book] was,
essentially, the 1869 gospel of Galton, the eugenical orthodoxy that
all
mental disorders and diseases were at least eighty percent genetic and
at most twenty percent environmental.' 59

THE
REASONS FOR THE GROWTH
OF EUGENICS

Part of the reason that
the eugenics movement
caught on so rapidly was because of the failures of the many innovative
reformatory and other programmes designed to help the poor, the
criminal,
and people with mental and physical problems. Many of those who worked
in these institutions concluded that most people in these classes were
'heredity losers' in the struggle for existence. And these unfit should
not be allowed to survive and breed indiscriminately. Evolution gave
them
an answer to the difficulties that they faced. Charles Loring Brace

'who had labored long
and hard for the
poor boys of New York City and who had been so fascinated by evolution
that he read and re-read The Origin of Species thirteen times,
reported
that during the depression winter of 1873-74 those connected with
charity
work had warned against indiscriminate giving to the poor. But the
warnings
went unheeded, with the result that tramps converged on New York, many
poor families abandoned their jobs, and many laborers lost the habit of
steady industry'.51In short, instead of helping
people, charity
was supposedly hurting them by destroying positive habits of industry
and
enabling them to breed more of their own genetically inferior type.
Many
of those who began their careers helping the poor concluded that many,
if not most, of their programmes were doing more harm than good.

The translation of the
eugenics movement
into policy took many forms. In America, the sterilization of a wide
variety
of individua1s who were felt to have 'heredity problems,' mostly
criminals,
the mentally retarded, mentally ill and others, were at the top of
their
list. The first sterilization laws in the United States were in
Indiana.
They required mandatory sterilization of

'confirmed criminals,
idiots, imbeciles,
and rapists in state institutions when recommended by a board ofexperts'The second effect of the
eugenics movement was
the passage of a variety of laws restricting emigration of the
'inferior
races' — a group whose identity few agreed on, but in America it often
included Blacks, Slovaks, Jews, Greeks, Turks, Magyars, Russians,
Poles,
and even Italians.

Although the American
courts challenged many
of the eugenic laws, only one case, Bell versus Buck, reached
the
Supreme Court of the United States.

In an eight to one vote,
the high court upheld
sterilization for eugenic reasons, concluding that 'feeblemindedness'
was
caused by heredity and thus the state had a responsibility to control
it
by this means! The court's opinion was written by none other than
Justice
Oliver Wendell Holmes who used his no small knowledge of science in his
erudite opinion. He forged a link between eugenics and patriotism,
concluding
that eugenics was a fact derived from empirical science. A rash of
sterilization
laws which were passed in half of the states soon followed, many of
which
were more punitive than humanitarian.53

Many eugenicists also
believed that negative
traits that one picked up in one's lifetime could be passed on. The
theory
of acquired characteristics was widely accepted, and was not
conclusively
refuted until the work of August Weismann of Germany. The new view,
called
neo-Darwinian, taught that acquired characteristics could not be
inherited,
and thus

'our only hope for
the permanent improvement
of the human stock would then seem to be through exercising an
influence
upon the selective process'.54The importance of this is
emphasized by Hailer
who concludes that
'the disproof of the
inheritance of
acquired characteristics was, therefore, a major episode on the road to
the acceptance of eugenics'.55Among the research that
discredited some of
the eugenics ideas, probably the foremost was the realization that
resulted
from the ongoing research into genetics that the relationship between
the
genotype and the phenotype was farmore complex than
previously
imagined.

And much of this research
was on the so-called
simple creatures such as the fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster). Secondly,
it was realized that, as a human is produced from between 50,000 and
100,000
genes, it is extremely difficult to determine if any one is 'superior'
to another. At best, one could try to make judgments relative to the
superiority
of one specific trait compared to another. This is most easily done in
the case of a mutation. A person who had the mutation for hemophilia
could
be considered inferior for that trait compared to the person who does
not.

On the other hand, this
method considers
only one gene, which means that a person without the genetic defect for
hemophilia will be genetically inferior in some other way compared to
the
one with it. He may have the mutation for retinoblastoma, for
example,
and develop eye cancer later in his life.

Even a person who has
certain traits, such
as below average intellect, may as a whole be genetically
superior,
a determination which we cannot make until all 100,000 genes are mapped
and then compared with the whole population. And even then
comparative
judgments cannot be made except on simplistic grounds, such as counting
the total number of 'inferior' and 'superior' genes.

This falls short in that
certain single genes
cancause far more problems than others, or conversely, can
confer
on the person far more advantages than most other genes. It would then
be necessary to rate each individual gene, something that is no easy
task.
In addition, many so-called inferior genes are actually mutations which
were caused somewhere in the humangenetic past, and were since
passed on to the victim's offspring. Of the unidentified diseases,
about
4,000 are due to heritable mutations – and none of these 4,000 existed
in our past before the mutation for it was introduced into the human
gene
pool. This is de-evolution, an event which is the opposite of the
eugenics
goal of trying to determine the most flawless race and limit
reproduction
to them. This goal is flawed because the accumulation of mutations
tends
to result in all races becoming less perfect.56

Although the validity of
many of the eugenic
studies and the extent of applicability to humans were both seriously
questioned,
the demise of the eugenics movement had more to do with social factors
than new scientific discoveries. Haller lists

'the rise of Nazism,
the Holocaust,
and America's struggle in World War II to defeat Hitler's Germany…the
civil
rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, as well as the wars on poverty
in the 1930s and 1960s.' 57In addition, Haller notes
that, although the
American and European academic life was once 'virtually a WASP (White
Anglo-Saxon Protestant) preserve' it was more and more joined
by
various racial minorities, including Asian Indians, Orientals, as well
as American blacks.58 Many of these rejected the movement
that
labelled them inferior. Further, the atrocities and injustices
committed
both at home and in Europe made these once respectable beliefs
repugnant,
even though the basic theory of evolution was still widely accepted by
the scientific community.

Many of the people
involved in the eugenics
movement can best be summarized as true believers, devoted to the cause
and blissfully ignoring the evidence which did not support their
theories.
Yet many knew that its basic premise was unsound, and often tried to
rationalize
its many problems. Galton

'seems never to have
been entirely at
peace. He was continually plagued by varying degrees of nervous
breakdown…'59When the data did not conform
with their expectations,
ingenious ways of explaining such problems were created. Professor
Laughlin,
who had a doctorate of science in biology from Princeton, reported to
Congress
on November of 1922 that, although immigrants might themselves be
healthy,
they carry bad recessive genes – which would in future generations
cause
problems. This claim was in response to the data that he himself had
meticulously
collected which found that the problems of immigrants, such as
feeblemindedness,
criminality and related, were in many cases actually lower than native
born Americans.

The importance of studying
the eugenics movement
today is not just to help us understand history. A field which is
growing
enormously in influence and prestige, social biology, is in
some
ways not drastically different from the eugenics movement. This school
also claims that not only biological, but many social traits have a
genetic
basis, and exist from the evolutionary process. Although many social
biologists
take pains to disavow any connections, ideologically or otherwise, with
the eugenics movement, their similarity is striking. This fact is a
point
that its many critics, such as Stephen J. Gould of Harvard, have often
noted.60

In the late nineteenth
century, 'when
so many thought in evolutionary terms, it was only natural to divide
man
into the fit and the unfit.' 61Even the
unfortunates
who because of an unjust society or chance, failed in business or life
and ended in poverty, or those who were forced to live from petty
theft,
were judged 'unfit' and evolutionarily inferior.62 There
was
little recognition of the high level of criminality among common men
and
women, nor of the high level of moral virtuousness among many of those
who were labelled criminals. They disregarded the fact that what
separates
a criminal from a non-criminal is primarily criminal behaviour. Because
they are far more alike than different is one reason why criminal
identification
is extremely difficult.

The eugenicists also
usually ignored upper
class crime and the many offenses committed by high ranking army
officers
and government officials, even Kings and Queens, all of whose crimes
were
often well known by the people. They correctly identified some
hereditary
concerns, but mislabelled many which are not (such as poverty) and
ignored
the enormous influence of the environment in moulding all of that which
heredity gives us. They believed that since most social problems and
conditions
are genetic, they cannot be changed, but can only be controlled by
sterilization.63,
64

CHRISTIANITY
AND EUGENICS

In contrast, the teaching
of Christianity
presented quite a different picture. It declared that anyone who
accepted
Christ's message could be changed. The Scriptures gave numerous
examples
of individuals who were liars, thieves, and moral degenerates who,
after
a Christian conversion, radically turned their life around. The
regeneration
of reprobates has always been an important selling point of
Christianity.
From its earliest days, the proof of its validity was its effect on
changing
the lives of those who embraced the faith. Helping the poor, the weak,
the downtrodden, the unfortunate, the crippled, and the lame was no
minor
part of Christianity. Indeed, it was the essence of the religion, the
outward
evidence of the faith within. If one wanted to follow Christ, one was
to
be prepared, if necessary, to 'go and sell all that thou hast, and
give
to the poor' (Matthew 19:21, Mark 10:21).

Those who did not visit
the sick and the
poor, or help those in prison, and give drink and food to the needy
were 'cursed', and were to be consigned to the everlasting fire 'prepared
for the Devil and his angels' (Matthew 25:35— 45).And as
to
those who ‘have worldly goods, if they see one in need and do no
show
compassion and help him, the love of God does not dwell in him' (1
John 3:17).

Nor was this attitude
exclusive among the
Christians, but was also required of the Jews:

'If there be among
you a poor man…within
any of the gates in thy land…thou should not harden thine heart, nor
shut
thine hand from [them]… But thou shall open thy hand wide unto him, and
shalt surely lend him sufficient for his need…For the poor
shall
never cease out of the land: therefore I command thee, saying, thou
shalt
open thine hand wide unto thy brother, to thy poor, and to thy needy in
thy land' (Deuteronomy 15:7-15, Leviticus 25:35-43).Another conflict was over the
fact that the
church stressed the role of helping the weak and afflicted. Almost all
denominations concluded from Scripture and history that many who seem
to
be without hope can be 'reformed' and take responsible positions in
society.
While the churches may have exaggerated their success, they could easily
point to many well-documented examples of this claim. Further,
religious
leaders often put the cause of physical and mental degeneracy to
individual
and societal sins.

Many schooled in the
behavioural sciences
argued that what we needed to halt was social, not racial decline, and
what needed to be improved was not racial, but social factors. In a
summary
of the history of mental illness treatment, Sarason and Sarason
conclude
that

'during the Middle
Ages the importance
of the Christian spirit of charity, particularly towards stigmatized
groups
such as the severely mentally disturbed, cannot be over estimated. For
example, in Gheel, Belgium, the church established a special
institution
for the care of retarded and psychotic children. As they improved,
these
children were often placed with sympathetic families in the
neighborhood
of the institution.' 65

Much of the opposition
to the eugenics
programmes came from the religious community. Conditions such as
feeblemindedness
and mental illness, they reasoned, could not have been inherited
because
these people were part of God's creation, and God stated in Genesis
that
when He created Adam and Eve they were perfect. The cause of these
conditions
must be something other than mankind's innate inherited genetic
program.
Catholics were especially critical in that they believed that man's
spirit,
not his body, is paramount, and God does not judge persons according to
IQ tests or skull shapes, but according to his or her spiritual
attributes.

And many genuinely
retarded persons were
likeable, friendly, outgoing, and non-aggressive; a good example is
many
of those who are diagnosed with Down's Syndrome.66 Much of
the
criticism was against evolution itself; most eugenicists believed that
humans came from lower ‘beasts' and if this idea was wrong, then the
very
foundation of the eugenics movement was flawed.68

The conflict between
Christianity and eugenics
was also due to the latter's conflicts with the major doctrine of
Christianity;
that mankind through sin had fallen from his once high state, which
markedly
contrasts to the doctrine of eugenics, which teaches that mankind has
risen
from a lower state. The eugenics movement was directly at odds with
both
Christian and Jewish teachings, and this fact was not lost on those in
the movement; many were openly critical of Christianity, and large
numbers,
including the Darwins (Erasmus, Charles and Leonard), Galton, Huxley,
Davenport,
Wells and Pearson were open agnostics.

The founder of eugenics,
Francis Galton,
was not only an agnostic, but also openly hostile toward religion.

'While he tolerated
Louise's (his wife)
practice of religion in the home, he rarely missed an opportunity to
gibe
at the clerical outlook.'68Those who advocated the
eugenic approach called
their opposers ‘sentimentalists' and the 'natural ally' of the
sentimentalists
was 'the preacher'. 69

The Darwinian view that
the biological progress
of mankind results from the selection of the most fit and the
elimination
of the unfit especially caused conflicts. The value of superior humans
was such that Darwin was critical of all Christian attempts at helping
the weak. In his Descent of Man and Selection In Relation to Sex,
he said:

'We civilized men…do
our utmost to check
the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the
maimed,
and the sick, we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their
utmost
skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason
to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak
constitution
would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members
attended
to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly
injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care,
or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race;
but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant
as to allow his worst animals to breed... We must therefore bear the
undoubtedly
bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind.'70

THE
DECLINE OF THE EUGENICS
MOVEMENT

As more and more empirical
research by the
scientists connected with the universities was completed, it became
apparent
that the conclusions of the eugenics movement were invalid. Slowly
scientists
turned against the movement, or at least against some of the major
aspects
of the mainline movement. Included were Herman J. Muller, J. B. S.
Haldane,
Herbert Jennings and even Julian Huxley.

Not only advances in
science, but also political
changes – most notably the abuses in Nazi Germany and elsewhere – once
they became known, caused many to realize that many of the basic
eugenic
conclusions were incorrect. Many also saw the horrendous potential for
its future abuses. One of the major conflicts was that, under German
influence
many eugenicists later included Jews as an inferior race – a problem in
that many prominent biologists and anthropologists were Jewish. One,
Franz
Boaz of Columbia University, a German-Jewish immigrant, had become an
eminent
anthropologist. He was a well-respected scientist who wrote many books
both for professionals as well as the lay public. When he attacked the
movement, many listened. Once eugenic science turned on Jewish
scientists,
the latter rallied their colleagues against the movement as a whole.

As many of the supposed
biologically inferior
groups reached their second and third generation in America, such as
the
Jews, and Eastern Europeans, many did extremely well, empirically
documenting
that such groups were not biologically-defective. Another problem was
that
not only were Blacks and Jews singled out – but theIrish,
Welsh
and numerous other groups were also judged as racially inferior. It
soon
became apparent that many of the hodgepodge claims were tenuous.
Research
by anthropologists showed how incredibly important culture and learning
are, even in shaping minor behaviour nuances.

A major problem with their
biological theory
was that they ascribed even traits such as shyness to genes – and
manypeople
who were shy as youngsters came out of their shell to become confident,
assertive adults. Such traits were obviously not biologically
determined.
These observations caused researchers to seriously question the
validity
of performance evaluations as a whole, consequently forcing a damaging
peg in the wholesale conclusion that certain groups were totally
intellectually
inferior. These research studies showed that the effective intelligence
of a person is highly influenced by the interaction of heredity
and environment. Further, they found that more differences existed
within
a race than between the races.

Other researchers proved
that diet and sanitary
conditions were extremely important, especially in the so-called
feeblemindedness
condition. The irony of the assumption that feeblemindedness was
inherited
became apparent when it was found that many clearly mentally deficient
persons produced offspring which were fully normal. This was especially
true of those whose children were raised by relatives and had decent
food
and environments. The government's past practice of sterilizing
feebleminded
people because of their poor environmental conditions was now
recognized
as inhuman.

Later, even the theory of
natural selection
came under attack. It was realized more and more that the many supposed
sources of natural selection, especially war, plagues, and disease, did
not kill off primarily the weaker, but a major factor that influences
who
died was chance. And those who may have an innate disposition to resist
a certain disease quite often had an innate weakness to succumb to
others.

More and more it was
recognized that human
differences were biologically imperative – as J. B. S. Haldane stated
in
1932, a society of men that was uniformly perfect would produce an
imperfect
society. The enormous variety in humans – and among plants and animals
as well – was important because different environmental changes will
favour
some individuals, but allow others to perish. When the Pilgrims came
over
to America, few had the genetic predispositions to survive the strange
environment with its new germs and living requirements. If all those
that
came over were genetically identical, likely none of them would have
survived.71

Although many prominent
biologists in America
and elsewhere remained committed to the basic eugenics programme and
the
idea of a pure race until they died, many others quietly dropped their
race ideas. Unfortunately, most scientists did not discuss the errors
of
their past much, even when the public tide turned strongly against the
blatant racism of the movement as a whole. For most researchers, it
became
more and more apparent that many of the wholesale conclusions of the
eugenicists
were simply wrong. Once some of them questioned, researchers began to
question
all of them. Soon the whole house of cards fell, and its fall was a
near-total
collapse.

I must confess my
amazement at the latest
contribution from Jerry Bergman – a lengthy article that is so
unscholarly.

Like all Bergman articles,
he relies exclusively
upon secondary (even tertiary) sources. So it is to be expected that
the
reader is presented with an inaccurate and at times contradictory
presentation
of what eugenics is/was about. Followers had in common "a belief in
evolution
and a faith that science, particularly genetics [the term ‘gene'
arrived
in 1909!], held the key for improving the life of humans" (p. 25)
which,
according to Jerry Bergman means "one saves only the best cows for
breeding,
slaughtering the inferior ones, and these laws of nature must be
applied
to human animals" (p. 26).

What a pity that Bergman
didn't look at some
primary sources! Leonard Darwin, for example, president of the British
Eugenics Society for 27 years, in his What is Eugenics?, tells
us:

"The farmer may kill off
his inferior stock;
whilst no one advocates putting both the unwanted kitten and the
inferior
baby into the tub in the backyard…(such practices) will never be
introduced
into civilized countries. A highly developed moral sense and great
freedom
of choice are two of the most precious attributes of man, and the
necessity
for preserving them rules out these stockyard methods."

As we shall see, his
father Charles Darwin,
was equally emphatic that any form of ‘genocide' was quite
unacceptable;
but more on this later.

Bergman gives much space
to Darwin's cousin,
Francis Galton. The reportage fails to convey the extent to which the
two
men were not only related but interacted with one another, socially and
in their research. The latter influenced Darwin during the writing of The
Descent of Man; Dalton dismissed the theory of the 'inheritance of
acquired characteristics'; Charles believed any suggestion of breeding
a race of ‘super men' was neither just ("all men are brothers, sharing
a common ancestry") nor practical. Both men, along with Huxley and
Wallace,
were vigorous in their public support of the North, in the American
civil
war, ("the destruction of slavery would be well worth a dozen years
war",
wrote Charles) at the time when many Christian bishops continued to
support
the Southern system keeping the ‘inferior blacks' on the plantations.

How odd that Bergman, who
tells us so much
trivia about Dalton and his colleagues, omits all this relevant material?!

Writing for the Eugenics
Society, Leonard
Darwin insisted:

"…any group of supermen
appearing in our
midst would probably bully or harass their fellow citizens, until the
mob
rose up and drove them from power or exterminated them. The creation of
supermen is to be condemned because it would lead to either tyranny or
rebellion".

Dalton's colleague, Karl
Pearson, comes under
special attack from Bergman. No less than three times we are told that
he was an individual "without feeling and sympathy" or words to that
effect.
(pp 31, 34, 35) This repeated claim, however, comes from a single
reference
in a secondary source. Had Bergman looked at the massive output of
Pearson
on social matters, he might have arrived at a more accurate assessment.
Here, for example, is Pearson talking to the Deptford working-men's
club
in 1884:

"We hear of 40,000
people in Liverpool
alone living in cellars underground. We are told that the annual number
of deaths from fever, generated by uncleanliness and overcrowding in
the
dwellings of the poor, was then in England and Wales double the number
of persons killed in the battle of Waterloo. We hear of streets without
drainage, of workshops without ventilation, and of ten to twenty people
sleeping in the same room, often five in a bed and rarely with any
regard
to sex."

This "cold, remote" person
who "treated any
emotional pleasure as a weakness", according to Bergman's secondary
source,
extols all workers, of hand and brain, lists many categories
of
them – those who make shoes, those who teach the children, emphasizing
that all forms of labour are equally honorable (his emphasis).
"Feeling,
as I do, the extreme misery which is brought about by the present state
of society", he suggests those who do 'irksome forms of labour' are not
only the more honourable and should be rewarded with shorter hours,
but,
more importantly, these people should not need envy those in more
comfortable
employment.

He continues:

"But there is a matter
for which I could
wish the working classes would envy the wealthy even more than they
might
reasonably do for their physical luxury – namely their power to
procure
education. Leisure employed in education, in self improvement,
seems
to me the only means by which the difference in character between
various
forms of labour can be equalized."

He equates the education
he would offer
all with the new morality that must come from "the
reconstruction
of society", implicitly outlined by John Ruskin and William Morris –
aspirations
that are "precisely the teaching of the Paris Commune or again of the
Anabaptist
Kingdom of God in Munster". The reader will recall that, according to
Bergman,
this same Karl Pearson, "co-founder of the field" (of eugenics), led a
movement believing that "providing educational opportunities and
governmental
benefits seemed a misplacement of resources"! (pp 26, 31)

Closer to the issue under
discussion: If
Dr Bergman finds the time to read Pearson's heavily-documented article
Martin
Luther, in the Westminster Review, January 1884, he will
appreciate
that Luther's calls for ill treatment and massacres of the Jewish
people
make the outbursts of Adolf Hitler on the same topic seem very mild!

I have discussed the
questions of heredity
vis-a-vis
IQ
in earlier contributions to the Investigator, and will not
repeat
this material here. The massive correlation data obtained in
comparisons
of MZ and DZ twins overwhelmingly supports the view that heredity
accounts
for 70% of the scores obtained. If this is part of the eugenic
question,
as Bergman insists, he has yet to tell us why IQ tests invariably show
European Jews as scoring higher than whites; or to offer his
explanation
of why the measurement of intelligence was banned in Nazi Germany.

His arguments (pp 40-41,
46) that "a person
without a genetic defect for hemophilia will be genetically inferior in
some other way" makes no sense, as does the meaningless remark that a
person
with "below average intellect" (whatever that might mean) may as a
whole
be genetically superior (whatever that might mean"). What books can he
be reading that he uses language like "the total number of ‘inferior'
and
‘superior' genes?

Bergman cites Sahlins for
his nonsensical
claim that "the accumulation of mutations tends to result in all races
becoming less perfect" — but Sahlins says no such thing and I hope Investigator
readers
will check this out for themselves, rather than take my word for it.
His
claim that people who

"were shy as youngsters
came out of their
shell to become confident, assertive adults. Such traits were obviously
not biologically determined"
just does not follow. Type 2 diabetes, for example,
which develops in later life, is significantly more strongly correlated
with genetic factors than type 1 diabetes!

Likewise, if Bergman read
some primary source
material, he would understand that "mentally deficient persons produce
offspring which were fully normal" due to the ‘regression to the mean'
– the outcome of the statistical ‘regression analysis' he (correctly)
accredited
to Charles Pearson!

In the final pages of
Bergman's Brief
History, I was pleased to see a quotation from a ‘primary source'
–
The
Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex. But a
disappointment
lay in store for me! Three lines from the end of the extract quoted, we
come to "…". What has Jerry Bergman omitted? Allow me to ‘fill the
gap':

The aid which we feel
impelled to give
to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of
sympathy,
which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but
subsequently
rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more
widely
diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard
reason,
without
deterioration in the noblest part of our nature…if we were
intentionally
to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent
benefit,
with an overwhelming present evil.

The reason for my
aforementioned disappointment
is that it appears Dr Bergman did not take his quotation from the
‘primary
source', Darwin, after all. For a few paragraphs further on Bergman
talks
of the growing attack on ‘the theory of natural selection' on the
grounds
that "It was realised moreand more that the many supposed
sources
of natural selection, especially war, plagues and disease, did not kill
off primarily the weaker…" However this is precisely the very point
that
Darwin himself makes in the very next paragraph of his Descent of
Man!
That Bergman is obviously unaware of this is only explainable if his
quotation
has been ‘lifted' from a secondary source!

The Bergman article
concludes in the same
contradictory confusion that has been it's characteristic. In the final
paragraph we are told that eugenics was soon seen to be "simply wrong"…
"Soon the whole house of cards fell, and its fall was a near-total
collapse".
Yet, just a few pages previously, we are told,

"The importance of
studying the eugenics
movement today is not just to help us understand history. A field which
is growing enormously in influence and prestige, social biology, is
in some ways not drastically different from the eugenic movement. This
school also claims that not only biological, but many social traits
have
a genetic basis, and exist from the evolutionary process…"

So the
eugenic/sociobiological approach is
‘past history', in "near-total collapse" or "enormously growing in
influence
and prestige". Which is it, Dr Bergman?

Is the
Orthodox History of
Eugenics True?A
Reply to Bob Potter

Jerry Bergman

(Investigator 77, 2001
March)

My father was for years an
active member
of various humanist organizations, including the American Humanists
Society.
They stress that all people are basically good and that evil people are
only the result of evil environments. This pervasive influence has
colored
the way I have viewed people ever since.

Unfortunately, I have
found – especially
in academia where most of my background and experience lie – that some
people can be absolutely vicious and care little about interacting or
debating,
but behave like high school taunters who unmercifully pick on someone
who
is different (is short, wears glasses, and especially those who do not
excel athletically). They can be merciless and are seemingly only
concerned
with hurting others. This response is especially common when
interacting
about religion and related topics.

A trait of this tendency
is ad hominem attacks.
Darwinists, when discussing articles written by creationists,
overwhelmingly
utilize name-calling. Examples that Potter uses includes the term
"unscholarly,"
the claim that I include "so much trivia" but omitted all of the
"relevant
material," and if I find "the time to read," and my "nonsensical"
claims
and other such terminology. Many of his claims are absolutely without
foundation.
He claims that "all" my articles rely extensively upon secondary
sources
– which is not true as he would know if he had read my over five
hundred
in press and in print articles and papers.

Potter often infers that I
am not aware of
something of which I am fully aware, and thus the use of language "if
Bergman
read some primary source material, he would understand that..." which
is
derogatory and, at the least, presumptuous on Potter's part. Much is
made
out of relying upon secondary sources, but there is a very good reason
for relying upon the existing body of scholarly knowledge. As Potter
acknowledges,
an enormous amount has been written about eugenics in many languages,
and
to read and assimilate even a small part of this literature would take
a lifetime – and to conclude that one should not write about anything
one
hasn't spent a lifetime studying is foolish. Few of us could ever write
about anything if this were the case. Actually, I did read a
considerable
number of primary sources, including several by Wiggam and Arthur Keith.

In my library alone I have
over three hundred
books on eugenics, many of them primary sources, such as the books by
Hooton,
Kammer, Popenoe and Johnson, and Wiggam. Rather than focus on primary
sources,
I chose, in the words of the great sociologist Robert K. Morton to
"stand
on the shoulders of giants," and rely upon the leading eugenic
historians.
My purpose in writing the paper was to try to summarize in a few pages
what the leading researchers in this area took many thousands of pages
to state.

For this reason, I
devoured secondary sources
written by men who have spent much of their life researching this
topic,
such as Robert N. Proctor who has published several volumes on eugenics
(racial hygiene) and related. Proctor reads German and thus has access
to a great amount of important original material (although I passed
German
for my Ph.D., my German is pretty rusty now). The many reviews of
Proctor's
works are most all laudatory, as are those of Daniel J. Kevles,
professor
of history at California Institute of Technology, a leading American
College.
Kevle's extensively documented book includes almost a hundred pages of
notes and references. The many reviews and scholarly assessments of his
work conclude it is excellent as is true with many of the other
references
that I utilized. I thus stood on the shoulder of not one, but many
giants.

Although it is possible
that the assessment
of almost all the leading scholars is totally erroneous (which is what
Potter implies since basically my work was a summary of many of the
leading
contemporary scholars in this area), I need evidence that all
of
these scholars are wrong before I will revise my views. Furthermore, I
doubt if this evidence can be presented in a book that is much less
than
four or five hundred pages (and no doubt would be very controversial
since
it would contradict all of the scholars without exception that I
consulted).
My original article was about twice as long, and it was very apparent
in
shortening it that summaries by well-known scholars were much more
useful
than a larger number of quotes by individual eugenicists.

Much of what Potter notes
simply adds to
what I said, and no way detracts from it. For example he discussed
Pearson's
"heavily documented article on Martin Luther" in which Luther fumed
against
the Jews. I am very aware of this history (and also that Luther threw
bottles
of ink at the devil, and said and did many other things that we today
regard
as foolish), but I fail to see what relevance this has to my article. I
am fully aware that many people in history have done many awful things,
but my paper was on the eugenics movement and the tragic influence it
had
on many people. Also, a historian friend tells me that Luther never
advocated
killing Jews as commonly believed and actually condemned such behavior.

I am also very aware that
many eugenicists
did not advocate slaughtering inferior individuals — the goal of the
Nazi
movement at first was only to prohibit intermixing of the races to
reduce
interbreeding among them. This didn't work, and so they had to take
more
extreme measures. The mass extermination of Jews did not begin in
earnest
until 1942. Because some (or even many) of the early eugenicists were
not
in favor of slaughtering individual humans does not negate the fact
that
the movement led to this eventuality. I am also very aware that
Darwin's
family was opposed to slaughtering inferior humans, and Darwin himself
was opposed to slavery (and even gave money to Christian missions).
This,
though, does not negate the fact that his teachings relative to the
inferiority
of certain races were the primary catalysts for the eugenic movement.

Part of the reason why
Darwin and Galton
took a constrained stand also has much to do with their very religious
background — especially that of Emma Darwin who was a devout Christian
(her letters clearly testify to her religiousness). Nonetheless, Darwin
led the foundation which eventually led to the events that I discussed
in this and other articles. Once eugenics was accepted, the evil that
followed
came much easier.

I was glad that Bob Potter
noted that Darwin
and his cousin Frances Galton interacted with one another extensively,
both socially and in their research. In trying to absolve Darwin of the
responsibility for the Eugenic movement some try to deny this. They
claim
that Frances Galton was responsible for what became the tragedy of the
Eugenic movement, not Darwin, and argue that the two did not closely
interact,
which Potter notes is incorrect.

I'm also quite aware that
Pearson and his
colleagues wrote about, and seemed to be concerned about, the poor
conditions
in England and Wales at the time they were living. It appears they did
this, though, to try to make a point about how they felt society should
change, and not necessarily out of genuine concern for these people.
Had
they genuinely been concerned, it would seem they would have been much
more active in directly trying to ameliorate these problems, such as
was
done by Mother Theresa.

My remark that persons
without genetic defects
or some genetic disease will usually be genetically inferior in some
way
has been well documented in many studies. No one person has all the
genes
which produce a complete set of idealistic characters – and typically
the
presence of some trait causes or results in (or is associated with) a
lack
in some other area. Extensive research on cognitive style mapping shows
that some people learn best by listening, others by reading, others by
doing, and rarely are all cognitive styles equally effective. Research
on thousands of these maps has confirmed this, as anyone who has much
experience
in teaching knows.

Furthermore, I fail to see
how the claim
that accumulations of mutations tend to result in all races becoming
less
perfect is nonsensical – this is a fact, as a study of genetics has
shown.
When new mutations are introduced into the genome, a disease or
condition
is caused to exist which never before existed. We have now documented
around
five thousand mutations which are clearly deleterious in most all
situations
(Buyse, 1990). Some mutations are introduced to the human genome
repeatedly,
others only once or a few times in history.

Nonetheless, the human
mutation load is increasing,
not decreasing. The average human today is believed to contain five or
six potentially deleterious mutations which fortunately often do not
express
themselves because they are recessive and are masked by a dominant
normal
gene.

As Potter correctly notes,
mentally deficient
persons can produce offspring which are fully normal due to the
regression
toward the mean tendency. Nonetheless, depending upon the cause of the
retardation (often many cases of retardation are due to deleterious
influences
such as teratogens, and are not genetic) they tend to have lower IQ's
than
average. Potter's comment that some mentally defective persons produce
offspring which are fully normal is, of course, a problem because the
children
are often the intellectual equals of their parents by the time the
children
reach the age of 11 or so. This often causes serious discipline
problems,
a concern that case-workers have to routinely deal with.

As to the primary source
quote that Potter
was "pleased to see" I have no idea where he obtained his quote from,
as
it was not the quote that I used (p. 45) although the type setters did
leave off a line in my original Darwin quote. I have a 25-volume set
(putatively
the complete works of Charles Darwin), and thus quoted from the
original
(which I checked to confirm). As to Potter's question whether the
eugenic
social biological approach is past history and near total collapse, or
is growing, I think Bob Potter knows the answer. Among most orthodox
scientists
it is past history and in total collapse, but among a relatively small
number of renegades (who are heavily criticized and attacked in print)
it is growing in influence and prestige. The two statements are not
contradictory,
but are referring to different populations as should be clear from the
article.

Potter cites the figure
that 70% of IQ is
genetic, and 30% is environmental (a commonly cited proportion). This
indicates
that a person with an average IQ of 100 can, through appropriate
environment
stimulation and study, reach up to the gifted level (when I taught
gifted
education classes, our cut-off point was 130). This demonstrates that
the
environment has a major influence, given that this data is correct.

European Jews score higher
than whites largely
because education is often highly valued among Jewish families, both in
Europe and America. In the area where I was raised lived a large number
of European Jews, and it was very apparent that they valued education
much
more so than did my counterparts. When seeking warm fuzzes for my
educational
accomplishments, my goyim friends felt education was useful mainly to
obtain
a better job and make more money, but I was invariably overwhelmed by
support
from my Jewish friends.

Fortunately, most of my
creationists friends
likewise value education (which may also reflect the Biblical
influence).
Another theory is the better-educated Jews were less likely to convert
or be totally assimilated, hence the current (remaining) Jewish
population
is enriched with intelligent people.

An excellent gauge of
whether an article
was effectively critiqued is, if the article critiqued was rewritten,
how
would it be different given the critique? In this case, the only thing
I would change is to correct the typographical error (which I caught
only
because I was trying to find the quote which Potter incorrectly
attributed
to my article). None of the points that Potter made would change the
article,
except to make it longer with sidetracks (which probably would be
edited
out by an editor anyway). Most of my articles are reviewed by at least
four or five persons before they are published, and thus, even though
the
article has my name on it, it is in fact the work of a number of people.

If Potter reviewed the
article, I would have
to conclude that his review was not very helpful (when the article was
originally reviewed, all the reviewers found several points that could
be clarified, and thus were helpful in producing the final product). I
welcome and encourage critiques of my work, for by this means an author
can grow. Unfortunately, Potter's critique did not help me do this.

If he feels that he
nonetheless is able to,
I would be glad to send him copies of articles I am presently working
on
for his review. My guess is he will not take me up on the offer (I
wrote
to him offering a copy of my latest book, which retails for $69.50, but
he has not yet answered my letter, and thus I have no reason to believe
he would answer this offer). I am fully willing to send him working
copies
of my articles for his critiques, for such is most valuable and
required
by all scholars because no one sees the universe perfectly. He appears
to not want to facilitate the advance of knowledge or understanding,
but
like the schoolyard bully he only wants to hurt someone for reasons of
maliciousness alone. If I am wrong, I will gladly apologize in print.
One
can be thankful that we have a few magazines like Investigator that
allow a hearing from both sides — many journals simply censor the side
they are opposed to, and so it is never heard by its readers.

In summary, most of
Potter's criticisms are
not about what I wrote, but are a result of reading between the lines,
assuming much, and drastically misquoted or rephrasing many points
which
I am fully aware of but which are largely irrelevant to the basic
arguments
of my paper. Indeed, specifically what his argument is, is difficult to
say. Is he saying that eugenics is the savior of humankind, and that we
should indeed adopt eugenic programs as advocated by Galton, Hitler, or
someone else? Or maybe he advocates a more benign approach, somewhat
like
Elmer Pendell in his book "Why Civilizations Self-Destruct."

A few years ago William
Shockley, a noble
laureate who was co-inventor of the transistor, advocated a somewhat
benign
approach which encouraged people with higher IQ's to have larger
families,
and those with lower IQ's to have smaller families (a position for
which
he was roundly condemned by many). I had a number of conversations with
him about this (I did some consulting work for him at the time), and it
seemed to me then that what he was advocating was fairly benign. Yet
the
press vociferously condemned him in the strongest terms – he was called
a racist, a Hitlerist, etc. I thought he was a kind man with a lot of
ideas,
and although I didn't agree with him on his eugenic ideas, I could
understand
where he was coming from.

My guess is, if Bob Potter
fully and openly
expounded his ideas, he would also be vociferously condemned by
academia
and the press alike. Eugenics is not an idea that one can be very
kindly
toward without repercussions, at least in America. Jensen, a professor
at the University of California, Berkeley, reputedly has to be escorted
by police when on campus, and in his own classroom to keep disruptions
from turning violent. Maybe one can get away with this in Great
Britain,
but even mild eugenic ideas in this country are usually not tolerated.

The social biologists have
not avoided these
problems but have tried to focus on ants and similar critters, and have
been very careful about implying that eugenic ideas should be
translated
into social policy and applied to humans. Nonetheless, some stinging
criticisms
of their work, such as Social Biology Examined edited by
Ashley
Montague (published by Oxford University Press) have strongly condemned
their work. I am told that at professional meetings, people will stand
up and denounce their work.

As a result many social
biology writers are
very careful as to how they phrase their ideas, stressing the positive
side. The fact is:

Racism was only one
step away from eugenics,
a school of applied Darwinism founded by Francis Galton with the aim of
improving the fitness of the human race by applying the "theory of
heredity,
of variations, and the principle of natural selection." From eugenics
it
was no large leap to genocide (Hsu, 1986, p. 11).

I don't wish to make any
further comments
on the main theme of my critique of Jerry's Brief History of the
Eugenics
Movement. I am sure readers of the Investigator (who have
an
interest in this topic) are capable of re-reading Bergman's and my
contributions
and deciding for themselves the ‘rights and wrongs' of our differing
points
of view. There is nothing in Bergman's Reply to Bob Potter on
the
history of the ‘movement' that is not answered in my original essay.

There are, however, a few
tangential points
raised.

For example – Bergman, who
has "over three
hundred books on eugenics" (that's about 280 more than I have!) insists
that he does use "a considerable number of primary sources",
and
to demonstrate this he provides a listing of seven of them on p. 13. Tragically,
however, when one looks at the list provided, one soon discovers that
not
a single ‘primary source' is included!

Anatomist, Sir Arthur
Keith did indeed write
about the topic, mostly in the early years of the last century, his Essays
on Human Evolution appeared in 1946. Anthropologist, E A Hooton
wrote
Up
from the Ape, first published in 1946: the other 'authorities' are
authors unknown to me and to the library of the nearby University of
Sussex,
where evolutionary biology has been taught for decades under John
Maynard
Smith – the man who taught Richard Dawkins! [There is a sociologist
David
Popenoe, a physicist named Kammer but no Wiggam under any discipline.]

Whilst on the subject of
source material,
I am totally mystified by Jerry's 'having no idea where I got my Darwin
quotation from'. As I made clear when I used it, I took it from the
paragraph
that immediately follows the one Bergman quoted from The Descent of
Man – the only ‘primary source he used!

Jerry tells us he was
careful to check the
quotation in his 25-volume set of the complete works of Charles Darwin
(I only have five of these!), so how could he possibly have had such
difficulty?

I was interested also to
learn that Jerry
has learned from "a historian friend" that "Luther never advocated
killing
Jews as commonly believed and actually condemned such behaviour".
Although
arguably not relevant to the eugenics question, academics usually
settle
disputes of this kind, not by hearsay reports from friends, but by
reference
to relevant documents. In Luther's Concerning the Jews and their
Lies
(1543), he tells us:

"First, that the Jewish
synagogues and
schools be set on fire, and what will not burn be covered with earth,
that
no man ever after may see stick or stone thereof…
Secondly, that their
houses in like fashion
be broken down and destroyed, since they only carry on in them what
they
carry on in their schools. Let them content themselves with a shed or a
stall like the gipsies, that they may know they are not lords in our
land…
Thirdly, all their
prayer-books and Talmuds
must be taken from them, since in them idolatry, lies, cursing, and
blasphemy
are taught…
Fourthly, that their
Rabbis, on penalty
of death, be forbidden to teach…
Fifthly, that safe
conduct on the highways
be denied to Jews entirely, since they have no business in the country,
being neither lords, officials, nor traders, or the like; they ought to
remain at home…
Sixthly, usury shall
be forbidden them.
All that they have is stolen, and therefore it is to be taken from
them,
and used for pensioning converts."

Not only are their
synagogues to be burnt,
but:

"let him, who can, throw
pitch and sulphur
upon them; if any one could throw hell-fire, it were good, so that God
might see our earnestness, and the whole world such an example."

I appreciate that Jerry's
German is "pretty
rusty now" although he passed German for his PhD. (Would that have been
the PhD for Human Biology or the PhD for Evaluation, Research and
Psychology?)
He need not rely on his ‘historian friend', but could look at Luther's
texts, for himself, in the translations offered by Karl Pearson.

Just for the record:
Bergman claims that
he wrote to me "offering a copy of (his) latest book, which retails for
$69.50, but (I have) not yet answered (his) letter…" I have never
received
any communication from Jerry Bergman.

In the unlikely event that
any author believes
my opinions of any value, I am always happy to review or make comments
on
any material published or in preparation.